Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良), heading up a group championing agricultural exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, met with Beijing's top official in charge of Taiwan affairs, Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) for talks yesterday.
During the meeting with Hsu's 21-member group, Chen, director of China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said that agricultural sectors on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should bolster their exchanges and cooperation, given that the two sides have many complementary characteristics and share common interests.
Hsu then engaged in a closed-door meeting with Chen.
Hsu has recently co-founded a new political group , the Taiwan Democratic School. He is also running for a seat in next month's legislative elections as an independent.
Hsu and the delegation is scheduled to meet with Hui Liangyu (回良玉), a State Council vice premier in charge of agricultural affairs, today for talks on the feasibility of stepped-up agricultural ties across the Strait.
In related news, Zhang Mao (張矛), the vice mayor of Beijing said yesterday that his city may use lessons learned in Taipei's public transportation systems to help alleviate potential traffic jams during the 2008 Olympic Games in the capital.
Talking to visiting members from the Taipei Journalists Association, Zhang said that Beijing will develop the city's mass rapid transportation system to avoid a traffic nightmare from taking place during the Games.
Beijing City authorities may borrow Taipei's experiences in streamlining its traffic conditions, including opening exclusive traffic lanes for buses, Zhang told Taiwanese journalists.
Answering a reporter's question as to whether Beijing will consider inviting Taipei to jointly host some events of the 2008 Olympic Games, Zhang said some people have suggested that Beijing move the equestrian competition to Hong Kong, taking advantage of the special administrative region's long history of horse racing.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater